My day: Chicken soup and giggly children

Me and my mama, courtesy of The Mister

Today is my mom's birthday.  I wish I could be there with her to celebrate, but alas Spain is too far away to make the drive.  So in honor of her, The Mister and I cooked up some chicken soup, split a baguette, and had a home-style meal á la mama.  Hopefully she felt the love.

Today was the second day of school and my first real day of work.  Friday I took a tour and said hi to everybody, but today I started my class rotations.  I have  a few teachers that I shadow throughout the day so that I'm never in a classroom alone, and the kids continue to contemplate me as if I were a bright fish in a tank.

I don't know how I'm ever going to keep them all straight, these little darlings, because their names all seem to be María or Juan Carlos, except for one boy whose name is Nacho, which, let's be honest, is so über-awesome that it's almost inspiring.  It makes me want to write a sonnet.

But anyway, on Mondays I have two classes of five year olds, whose English is mercifully better than that of the older kids, and two classes of second grade.  The little ones are enthusiastic and bouncy, shouting "RED!" "YELLOW!" and thrilled to have an appreciative audience for their English. "LOOK AT ME!" they shout, standing and sitting in rapid succession on their brightly colored plastic chairs, "I SIT DOWN!"  

They are adorable, and very noisy, and they gape at me when I pretend I don't understand their Spanish.  Only English, I tell them.  I don't understand. Then they squint their whole faces up really hard, as if the key to concentration is in facial compression, and spit out a few words in heavily accented English. 

The older ones are harder, because they've learned to be shy.  Being shy, I've learned, is pretty much at complete odds with learning a new language.  You pretty much have to reach down inside, locate your inner extrovert, and drag her out kicking and screaming so that SHE can talk to people and learn while YOU sit your bashful unilingual self in the corner.  You just have to talk to people a lot, and make mountains of mistakes, and tell them that it's totally okay to correct you because you're trying to learn.  Spaniards, at least, are really nice about it.